[32] The most flourishing schools seem to have been the Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholics did not greatly concern themselves, as a church organization, with the slavery agitation, and St. Mary’s Mission and the Osage Manual Labor School were scarcely affected by the war and not at all by the troubles that presaged its approach.
[33] The Baptist school among the Potawatomies closed in 1861. See Appendix.
[34] House Report, 34th congress, first session, no. 200, pp. 14, 18, 94, 425.
[35] See Indian Office, Special File, no. 220.
[36] The work of the American Board among the Cherokees was discontinued just before the war [Missionary Herald, 1861, p. 11; American Board Report, 1860, p. 137].
[37] The four were: “Park hill, five miles south from Tahlequah; Dwight, forty-two miles south-southwest from Tahlequah; Fairfield, twenty-five miles southeast from Tahlequah; Lee’s creek, forty-three miles southeast from Tahlequah”—Commissioner of Indian Affairs [Report, 1859, p. 173]. There had been a fifth, an out station.
[38] The Congregational schools among the Choctaws were: Iyanubbi, near the Arkansas line; Wheelock, eighteen miles east of Doaksville; and Chuahla, one mile from Doaksville.
[39] The Southern Baptist Convention had not been long in the county prior to the Civil War. The Methodist Episcopal Church South had no schools but several missionaries. The American Baptist Missionary Union had a number of meeting-houses.
[40] The Presbyterians (Old School) established Wah-pa-nuc-ka Institute for young women, forty miles north of Red River and one and one-eighth miles west of the Choctaw and Chickasaw line; but differences arose between the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions and the Chickasaw authorities, neither institutional nor sectional, but purely financial, which caused the Presbyterians to abandon the school in 1860 [C. H. Wilson, attorney for the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, to Cooper, April 16, 1860]. The Presbyterian schools among the Choctaws were: Spencer Academy, “located on the old military road leading from Fort Towson to Fort Smith, about ten miles north of Fort Towson,” and Koonsha Female Seminary. Both of them were under the Presbyterian Board. A third institution, Armstrong Academy, belonged to the Cumberland Presbyterians. The Southern Methodists had Bloomfield Academy, Colbert Institute, and the Chickasaw Manual Labor School among the Chickasaws; and the Fort Coffee and New Hope academies, for boys and girls respectively, among the Choctaws.
[41] The Seminoles were late in manifesting an interest in education, and, when interest did arise among them, John Jumper, the chief, declared for boarding-schools and asked that such be established under the Presbyterian Board, the same that had influence among their near neighbors, the Creeks.